Business Technology Roundtable

Digital Transformation | Hybrid Cloud | IoT

Monday, February 12, 2018

Guided by senior executive goals for digital transformation, more organizations are increasing their use of cloud computing technologies. The typical multi-cloud mix includes a blend of public cloud, private cloud and traditional IT services. Finding the best-fit service mix starts with the business requirements.

The latest Global Cloud Index (GCI) 2016-2021 from Cisco focuses on the worldwide market outlook for enterprise data center virtualization and cloud computing services. Today's digital business is enabled by Hybrid IT infrastructure that supports the deployment of cloud-based solutions.

Driven by the surging enthusiasm for digital reinvention projects, data center traffic is growing fast. The market study authors forecast global cloud data center traffic will reach 19.5 zettabytes (ZB) per year by 2021 -- that's up from 6.0 ZB per year in 2016. Globally, cloud data center traffic will represent 95 percent of total data center traffic by 2021, compared to 88 percent in 2016.

Additionally, according to the Cisco assessment, the growth of Internet of Things (IoT) applications requires scalable server and storage solutions to accommodate new and expanding data center demands. By 2021, Cisco expects IoT connections to reach 13.7 billion -- that's up from 5.8 billion in 2016.

Hyperscale Cloud Data Center Growth

By 2021 there will be 628 hyperscale data centers globally, compared to 338 in 2016 -- that's 1.9-fold growth or near doubling over the forecast period. By 2021, hyperscale data centers will support:

53 percent of all data center servers (27 percent in 2016)

69 percent of all data center processing power (41 percent in 2016)

65 percent of all data stored in data centers (51 percent in 2016)

55 percent of all data center traffic (39 percent in 2016)

Data Center Virtualization and Cloud Growth

By 2021, 94 percent of workloads and compute instances will be processed by cloud data centers. In contrast, 6 percent will be processed by traditional IT data centers.

Overall data center workloads and compute instances will more than double (2.3-fold) from 2016 to 2021; however, cloud workloads and compute instances will nearly triple (2.7-fold) over the same period.

The workload and compute instance density for cloud data centers was 8.8 in 2016 and will grow to 13.2 by 2021. Comparatively, for traditional data centers, workload and compute instance density was 2.4 in 2016 and will grow to 3.8 by 2021.

Stored Data Growth Fueled by Big Data and IoT

Globally, the data stored in data centers will nearly quintuple by 2021 to reach 1.3 ZB by 2021, up 4.6-fold (a CAGR of 36 percent) from 286 EB in 2016.

Big data will reach 403 exabytes (EB) by 2021, up almost 8-fold from 25 EB in 2016. Big data will represent 30 percent of data stored in data centers by 2021, up from 18 percent in 2016.

The amount of data stored on devices will be 4.5 times higher than data stored in data centers, at 5.9 ZB by 2021.

Driven largely by IoT, the total amount of data created (and not necessarily stored) by any device will reach 847 ZB per year by 2021, up from 218 ZB per year in 2016. Data created is two orders of magnitude higher than data stored.

By 2021, video streaming will account for 10 percent of traffic within data centers, compared to 9 percent in 2016.

By 2021, video will account for 85 percent of traffic from data centers to end users, compared to 78 percent in 2016.

By 2021, search will account for 20 percent of traffic within data centers by 2021, compared to 28 percent in 2016.

By 2021, social networking will account for 22 percent of traffic within data centers, compared to 20 percent in 2016

SaaS is Still the Most Popular Cloud Service Model

By 2021, 75 percent (402 million) of the total cloud workloads and compute instances will be SaaS workloads and compute instances, up from 71 percent (141 million) in 2016. (23 percent CAGR from 2016 to 2021).

By 2021, 16 percent (85 million) of the total cloud workloads and compute instances will be IaaS workloads and compute instances, down from 21 percent (42 million) in 2016. (15 percent CAGR from 2016 to 2021).

By 2021, 9 percent (46 million) of the total cloud workloads and compute instances will be PaaS workloads and compute instances, up from 8 percent (16 million) in 2016. (23 percent CAGR from 2016 to 2021).

Monday, November 27, 2017

Digital technologies have altered how people and businesses interact. The potential for dislocation from ongoing digital transformation has created unprecedented levels of C-suite discussion. The decisive market leaders have heeded the warnings and taken bold actions.

That said, if you’re one of those Chief Technology Officers (CTO) that previously responded to this scenario by making small incremental adjustments to your IT agenda, then you’re potentially at risk. Any relief from those prior tweaks tend to be short lived. The same issues will likely resurface.

An Introduction to Digital Reinvention

Back in 2013, the IBM Institute for Business Value (IBV) introduced the concept of ‘Digital Reinvention’. Why is that concept noteworthy? Markets had evolved from organizational centricity, in which manufacturers and service providers defined a predictable state, into a radically different environment described as the everyone-to-everyone (E2E) economy.

The E2E economy has four distinct characteristics, which are now more important since the original IBM study was published. E2E is orchestrated, and based on open ecosystems which are collaborative and inclusive. Orchestration reflects coordination, arrangement and management of complex commercial environments.

Emerging technologies are expanding customer influence. A new generation of tech savvy customers demand more sophisticated and tailored experiences. According to a recent global survey of executives focusing on emerging business ecosystems, 54 percent believe customer buying behavior is shifting from a products- and/or services-based to an experience-based approach.

Seventy-one percent of global CEOs are now intent on treating customers as individuals rather than market segments -- that’s a 29 percent growth in only two years. And, 81 percent of global CEOs say they want to apply technology to develop stronger customer relationships.

These benefits arise even if fulfillment of the experience involves direct provision of products and services, or orchestration of products or services from partner organizations by way of a business ecosystem. The most successful digitally reinvented businesses establish a platform of engagement for their customers -- acting as enabler, conduit and partner.

Pathway to Digital Reinvention

According to the IBM IBV assessment, to succeed in this disruptive environment, organizations must offer compelling new experiences, establish new focus, build new expertise, devise new ways of working and embrace the digital drivers.

Pursue a new focus -- Leading businesses will develop new ways of realizing and monetizing value and spawn new business models, new forms of financing and better, more holistic ways of conducting risk assessments. Leaders will also engage the market in deeper, more compelling ways. They will create strategies and execution plans to deliver deep, contextual, compelling experiences, and find new ways to monetize customer Interactions.

Build new expertise -- Leading businesses will digitize products, services and processes that help them redefine the customer experience. They will augment these steps by applying predictive analytics, cognitive computing, the Internet of Things and automation to create a fully integrated, flexible and agile operational environment necessary to support and enable deep experiences.

Establish new ways of working -- Leading businesses identify, retain and build the right talent needed to create and sustain a digital organization. The most successful among these take measures to create and perpetuate an innovation-infused culture incorporating design thinking, agile working and fearless experimentation.

Leaders contextualize organizational priorities within business ecosystems, seeking new forms of partnering and new ways to build value within overall systems of engagement. They think deeply and strategically about how customer priorities might evolve, seeking opportunities to create engagement platforms to the benefit of their customers, their partners and themselves.

Embrace digital drivers -- Leading businesses combine open innovations to create organizations that can build the deep, compelling experiences customers desire. Rather than incrementalism, Digital Reinvention provides a path for visionary organizations to adopt an experience-first approach to planning, employing the strengths of ecosystem partners to create experiences that are truly unique.

Study Conclusion: Reinventing the Future

Digital technologies have redefined how people live, work and play. Pervasive technology is already changing traditional industry structures and economics and is reinterpreting what it means to be a customer and a citizen within the Global Networked Economy.

To thrive in a rapidly changing business environment, the most successful organizations will offer compelling new experiences, establish new focus, build new expertise and devise new ways of working -- all based upon a foundation of the latest digital drivers.

Monday, September 4, 2017

Are you open to new ideas, and given a compelling choice are you really prepared to change? That’s what informed CEOs are asking their C-suite leadership team. The context of those questions is about determining who is most qualified to guide the organization’s digital transformation journey. It’s also about setting expectations for C-level executives to partner.

IT and business leaders must acknowledge that they’ve likely reached a significant turning point. Business technology advances are disrupting the legacy status quo and bringing huge market turmoil in their wake. Industries are converging, and unfamiliar competitors are surfacing.

Granted, that convergence is creating opportunities for growth by shifting from products and services made by solo entities, to new cross-sector customer experiences built via strategic partnerships. But it’s also intensifying market competition. One company’s convergence can become another’s encroachment. So, how do you navigate through this labyrinth?

Open Collaboration in the Connected Economy

Welcome to the ‘connected economy’ (CE) -- a new business reality in which value is created through technology-enabled links among people, open digital systems and business partner networks. Across industries, huge opportunities are available for savvy organizations to become connected economy leaders.

Implementing connected business models and associated processes can help you significantly increase revenue growth and enhance your competitive edge. At the same time, a very real downside to falling behind exists: laggards risk becoming prey to disruptive innovations.

It’s a scenario in which a competitor with a completely different business model can put your traditional revenue stream at risk -- or worse, put you out of business. So, with that backdrop, how do you survive and prosper? What does it take to be a leader in the connected economy?

IBM asked Harvard Business Review (HBR) Analytic Services to uncover the drivers for business change, assess the preparedness of organizations, and identify the types of adjustments we must make to capitalize on emerging opportunities. Here’s what they found.

A Profile of the Global CE Leaders

Whatever their industry, the global CE leaders see their world rapidly changing, and they’re determined to be at the forefront of that change in order to remain relevant and claim their competitive advantage.

Their success is increasingly dependent on participation in broader business ecosystems. That being said, even the CE followers and laggards recognize the growing importance of tighter connections with other organizations in adjacent industries.

However, CE leaders are radically better positioned within their own business ecosystems -- something that could lead to a long-term advantage. The rest are under pressure to catch up. Fifty-two percent say that a substantial part of their revenue is already under threat from digital disruption.

To counter that threat, savvy organizations are changing how they operate. Moreover, the progressive CE leaders are already reaping the rewards of their new connected business models.

They’ve seen significantly stronger revenue growth over the past two years than their less-connected rivals -- in large part due to their ability to exploit information at speed through their use of hardware, software, and networking technologies.

How CE Leaders Leverage IT Infrastructure

What really sets CE leaders apart is the degree to which they recognize the threat from digital disruption and the value of their IT leadership in bringing them into the connected economy. That awareness is causing them to make digital initiatives a C-level priority.

CE leaders have built relationships between CIOs or CTOs and line of business (LoB) leaders, based on collaborative engagement. They invest more in digital technology, skills, and projects. They’ve created digital transition teams, while emphasizing that digital is part of everyone’s job.

That being said, only 18 percent of survey respondents say that their organization have applied progressive CE business models or open innovation to a significant extent. A key to success is the ability to exploit information at speed through the use of open hardware, software, and networking technologies.

As a result, 48 percent of CE leaders have seen double-digit revenue growth. And three times as many CE leaders claim growth of 30 percent or more, when compared to the laggards.

Common Traits of Proven CE Market Leaders

CE leaders are much more likely than other companies to:

Have C-level executives involved in leading digital initiatives.

Dedicate teams to help with various aspects of the transformation.

Break down organizational silos through restructuring and fostering cross-functional collaboration.

Invest in a data-centric IT infrastructure needed to build their digital platform.

Recognize the need for new, more advanced skills, and ensure their teams are acquiring or developing them.

Have a “business innovator” CIO or CTO.

HBR believes C-level involvement is crucial, given the profound changes that must take place to transition to a connected-economy business model. In fact, all senior executives at CE leader organizations take an active role in their digital business initiatives.

Why Open Innovation Ecosystems Matter

As internal resistance to change is overcome, the connected economy will become even more connected, with success relying on participation in a broader business ecosystem, defined as an interdependent network of collaborative individuals and organizations.

More than half of all survey respondents (and three-quarters of CE leaders) said their organization’s success is tied to relationships with organizations in adjacent industries. And, 80 percent of CE leaders are more likely to be favorably positioned within their partner ecosystem.

In conclusion, these strategic shifts don’t just happen; they’re led by change agents. CE leaders have made this transition to open innovation a C-level priority. They’re significantly more likely to benefit from business-innovator or transformational CIOs and CTOs who drive cross-functional integration and collaboration between IT and other parts of the business.

Not only are they breaking down silos inside their own organizations, they’re connecting to new business partners that apply open technologies in creative ways, as part of a broader digital business transformation model. This is the new normal; leaders adopt open ecosystems.

Monday, June 12, 2017

What's disruptive innovation, and why does it matter to leaders in the C-suite? It's how the savvy non-conformist will target market opportunities. How does this happen, when established companies seem to have the advantage? Creative software developers can quickly apply new technologies and digital business models to capture untapped demand.

Moreover, the most disruptive new companies will eventually reshape entire industries, swiftly pushing aside the legacy incumbent players -- it's a form of Digital Darwinism. The global networked economy will blossom, thanks to the pervasive Internet, while the adaptive entities will survive and prosper.

Over the forecast period, global IP traffic is expected to increase three-fold reaching an annual run rate of 3.3 zettabytes by 2021 -- that's up from an annual run rate of 1.2 zettabytes in 2016.

Apps for Next-Generation Internet of Things

According to the Cisco assessment, machine-to-machine (M2M) connections that support Internet of Things (IoT) applications are calculated to be more than half of the total 27.1 billion devices and connections. They will account for five percent of global IP traffic by 2021.

IoT innovations in connected home, connected healthcare, smart cars or transportation and a host of other next-generation M2M services are driving this incremental growth -- a 2.4-fold increase from 5.8 billion in 2016 to 13.7 billion by 2021.

With the rise of connected applications, the healthcare vertical will be the fastest growing industry segment (30 percent CAGR). The connected car and connected cities applications will have the second-fastest growth (29 percent CAGRs respectively).

Video Content Will Flood the Public Internet

That said, video will continue to dominate IP traffic and overall Internet traffic growth -- representing 80 percent of all Internet traffic by 2021, that's up from 67 percent in 2016. Globally, there will be nearly 1.9 billion Internet video users (excluding mobile-only) by 2021, that's up from 1.4 billion in 2016.

The world will reach three trillion Internet video minutes per month by 2021. Emerging mediums, such as live Internet video, will increase 15-fold and reach 13 percent of Internet video traffic by 2021.

"As global digital transformation continues to impact billions of consumers and businesses, the network and security will be essential to support the future of the Internet," said Yvette Kanouff, SVP and GM of Service Provider Business at Cisco.

Global IP traffic is expected to reach 278 exabytes per month by 2021, that's up from 96 exabytes per month in 2016. Global IP traffic is expected to reach an annual run rate of 3.3 zettabytes by 2021.

Busy hour Internet traffic is increasing faster than average Internet traffic. Busy hour Internet traffic will grow 4.6-fold (35 percent CAGR) from 2016 to 2021, reaching 4.3 Pbps by 2021, compared to average Internet traffic that will grow 3.2-fold (26 percent CAGR) over the same period reaching 717 Tbps by 2021.

Commercial IP traffic will grow at a CAGR of 21 percent from 2016 to 2021. Increased adoption of advanced video communications in the enterprise segment will cause business IP traffic to grow by a factor of 3 between 2016 and 2021.

Business Internet traffic will grow at a faster pace than IP wide area network (WAN). Furthermore, IP WAN will grow at a CAGR of 10 percent, compared with a CAGR of 20 percent for fixed business Internet and 41 percent for mobile business Internet.

Business IP traffic will grow fastest in North America. Business IP traffic in North America will grow at a CAGR of 23 percent -- that's a faster pace than the global average of 21 percent. In volume, Asia Pacific will have the largest amount of business IP traffic in 2021, at 17 EB per month. North America will be the second at 14 EB per month.

Note: the Cisco VNI Complete Forecast for 2016 to 2021 relies upon independent analyst forecasts and real-world network usage data. Upon this foundation are layered Cisco's own estimates for global IP traffic and service adoption. A detailed methodology description is included in the complete report.

Monday, February 13, 2017

Information technology (IT) advances are transforming the way we innovate in business, thereby disrupting the old guard and their predictable status-quo. It’s creating global market turbulence. Industries are converging, and new opportunities and threats are emerging, like never before.

So, how are savvy chief information officers (CIOs) leading this transition?

Back in 2015, the IBM Institute for Business Value conducted a market study that included the findings from over 1,800 CIO interviews from around the globe. The resulting insights are worthy of revisiting today, as we consider the digital business transformation outlook in 2017.

Introduction to the Torchbearer CIO

CIOs realize the barriers between formerly distinct industries are collapsing, as organizations in one sector apply their expertise to others – producing new hybrids and erasing prior traditional industry classifications in the process.

They believe it's the most influential trend that's transforming the mainstream business arena. Those deemed to be the ‘Torchbearer’ CIOs are particularly attuned to the shift -- in fact, a full 79 percent of these IT leaders expect industry convergence to have a significant impact.

How have these CIOs been preparing for a world of converging industries, intensifying competition and hyper-speed innovation? They’re focusing on three key goals in particular: 1) enhancing their organization intelligence and insight, 2) digitizing the front office and 3) strengthening the IT staff skills.

That said, only 57 percent of CIOs are reassessing their strategic direction. Many of the infrastructure decisions the IT department makes are no longer purely about technology -- they’re now considered core components of an organization’s essential business strategy.

Most Torchbearer CIOs have a plan of action. Seventy-one percent are considering the strategic implications of new technologies. They know they still have to provide basic IT services, as economically as possible. But they’re also looking for opportunities to create a competitive lead and improve the organization’s bottom line performance.

Moreover, the Torchbearer CIOs also place far more emphasis on building an agile organizational culture – one that supports rapid software developer experimentation and IT services prototyping – to help their team reach the market first with innovative new offerings.

In addition, the Torchbearer CIOs are eager to form partnerships that exploit the full potential of digital business technologies. They recognize that few enterprises can provide the full array of products, services and experiences that their stakeholders need and want.

Torchbearer CIO Lessons Learned

So, what can your organization take away from these study findings? What are the best practices that Torchbearer CIOs employ. Here’s four actionable insights:

Focus on disruptive innovation. Build an agile culture where rapid experimentation, informed by reliable intelligence, is the norm. Split big projects into smaller, more manageable chunks, allocate specific tasks to different teams and give them the freedom to get on with the job.

Pay close attention to what your external customers say. They can help you identify new trends, pinpoint problems with a product or service, clarify what differentiates your offering and establish what really matters to them, not just what you think they value.

Invest in technologies that will help you decipher the data you collect, and ramp up your organization’s analytical power. Identify the sorts of skills you’ll need to perform tomorrow’s jobs, not just the talent you need today.

Recruit for the future and collaborate with organizations that possess relevant expertise. Rotate existing employees every few months to help them develop an innovative, entrepreneurial spirit, strong business sense and the ability to communicate complex technological issues clearly.

Hybrid IT in Action: Systems of Innovation

Progressive CIOs have another significant thing in common; they know how to maximize their investment in legacy IT systems, and apply that solid foundation with the adoption of new platforms that -- when combined -- enable them to achieve superior transformation results.

For too many years, the decline of the mainframe platform has been predicted by those who have not been aware of the ongoing enhancements to these highly reliable systems. Many of the uninformed parties thought that mainframe extinction would be accelerated with the growth of cloud computing services. In fact, the mainframe has become a key component of hybrid cloud scenarios.

According to a Forrester Research market study, the mainframe is leveraged by 92 of the top 100 banks worldwide, 23 of the top 25 U.S. retailers, all 10 of the world’s largest insurers, and 23 of the world’s 25 largest airlines. Furthermore, successful CIOs have already unleashed the data and business processes that are embedded within their mainframe-based applications.

Starting with integrations between systems of engagement (SoE) and systems of record (SoR), they’ve defined innovative products and services that can tap the mainframe resource via APIs. Besides, containers and microservices are coming to the mainframe as more organizations adopt DevOps methodologies.

Forrester believes that integrating established apps with smaller new services will advance the mainframe environment towards faster application delivery, even greater scalability, and better overall manageability. They describe this evolved hybrid IT state as the ‘Systems of Innovation’ that so many CIOs apparently crave.

Sunday, November 13, 2016

Hybrid IT is a catalyst of progressive organizations. In fact, two-thirds of surveyed leaders say a blend of traditional and cloud infrastructure enables a strategic competitive advantage, according to a market study by the IBM Center for Applied Insights.

That said, savvy leaders are using hybrid cloud to power their digital transformation agenda, going beyond cost reductions and productivity gains. They’re also using cloud as a foundation for next-generation initiatives -- such as the Internet of Things (IoT) and Cognitive Computing.

New Insights into Emerging Cloud Trends

According to findings from the latest Cisco Global Cloud Index (GCI), cloud service traffic is expected to rise 3.7-fold -- that’s up from 3.9 zettabytes (ZB) per year in 2015 -- to 14.1 ZB per year by 2020.

The ongoing growth of cloud computing is being partly driven by the increased migration to hybrid cloud architectures that support the evolving demand for combining IT systems of record and systems of engagement.

Cloud computing adopters are now able to achieve greater operational efficiencies, utilizing hyperscale IT infrastructure models. Therefore, additional analysis of IT application workloads on these cloud platforms was developed for this year's study.

2016 GCI study uncovered the following:

Business workloads will grow by 2.4 fold from 2015 to 2020, but their overall share of data center workloads will decrease from 79 to 72 percent.

By 2020, database, analytics and IoT workloads will account for 22 percent of total business workloads -- that’s compared to 20 percent in 2015.

Hyperscale data centers will grow from 259 in 2015 to 485 by 2020. Moreover, hyperscale data center traffic is projected to quintuple over the next five years.

Hyperscale data center infrastructures will account for 47 percent of total data center installed servers and support 53 percent of all data center traffic by 2020.

By 2020, cloud data center traffic will reach 14.1 ZB per year, up from 3.9 ZB per year in 2015. Note, a zettabyte is one trillion gigabytes.

By 2020, traditional data center traffic will reach 1.3 ZB per year -- that’s up from 827 exabytes (EB) per year in 2015.

By 2020, 92 percent of workloads will be processed by cloud data centers; 8 percent will be processed by traditional data centers.

Workload density for cloud data centers was 7.3 in 2015 and will grow to 11.9 by 2020. Comparatively, for traditional data centers, workload density was 2.2 in 2015 and will grow modestly to 3.5 by 2020.

By 2020, 68 percent (298 million) of the cloud workloads will be in public cloud data centers -- that’s up from 49 percent (66.3 million) in 2015 (35 percent CAGR 2015-2020).

By 2020, data center storage installed capacity will grow to 1.8 ZB -- that’s up from 382 EB in 2015, or nearly a 5-fold growth.

By 2020, the total global installed data storage capacity in cloud data centers will account for 88 percent share of total DC storage capacity -- that’s up from 64.9 percent in 2015.

Globally, the data stored in data centers will quintuple by 2020 to reach 915 EB by 2020 -- that’s up 5.3-fold (a CAGR of 40 percent) from 171 EB in 2015.

Big data will reach 247 EB by 2020, up almost 10-fold from 25 EB in 2015. Big data alone will represent 27 percent of data stored in data centers by 2020, up from 15 percent in 2015.

Globally, data generated by IoT will reach 600 ZB per year by 2020 -- that’s 275 times higher than projected traffic going from data centers to end users/devices (2.2 ZB); 39 times higher than total projected data center traffic (15.3 ZB).

The Global Cloud Index (2015-2020) was developed by Cisco to estimate worldwide data center and cloud-based traffic growth trends. The ongoing forecast is particularly insightful, as the global networked economy and data center infrastructure become more intrinsically linked to commercial success.

Monday, September 12, 2016

Some mainstream IT buyers might think that most cloud infrastructure vendors and service providers are essentially alike. But there are key differences. Besides, given the body of market research to the contrary, there’s clearly no such thing as a "one-size-fits-all" cloud solution.

Furthermore, if you believe that a hybrid cloud should support an IT agenda to transform a business, then a viable solution must consider the preexisting systems of record within the enterprise. That’s why forward-thinking CIOs often seek information and guidance on two fronts.

First, they want to know how to extract costs from their legacy IT investments. Second, they desire to use that assessment exercise to free-up budget and fund innovation via a DevOps model that would streamline new cloud-native technology deployments.

That’s why pragmatic CIOs understand the reality of a coexistence environment, where current on-premises IT systems must be an integral part of the total digital transformation equation.

Applying the Best of Both Worlds

In previous global market studies, senior executive decision makers have stated that they are likely to always have a blend of traditional on-premises IT and cloud-based services. Cloud computing has enabled organizations to increase their overall utilization of existing IT assets.

Consider these highlights from a recent survey of senior executives:

92 percent of surveyed executives said their most successful cloud initiative enabled creation and support of new business models.

Executives said they expect 45 percent of workloads to stay on dedicated, on-premise systems, even as cloud adoption expands.

83 percent of high-performing organizations said their cloud initiatives are coordinated or fully integrated within the organization.

According to the latest worldwide market study by IBM Institute for Business Value, there are four main reasons why organizations are strategically combining cloud-based services and traditional IT into tailored hybrid solutions.

Fifty-four percent of surveyed executives cited the most popular reason for implementing hybrid cloud solutions as lowering the total ownership cost of technology.

Forty-two percent of respondents believe that operational efficiencies can stem from selecting the most compatible infrastructure and middleware.

Forty-two percent of respondents also said that cloud services are proven to accelerate innovation by enabling quick prototyping of new ideas for faster experimentation.

To meet customer expectations, forty percent of respondents reported that cloud’s agile and composable attributes enable faster time to market for new products and services.

Additional Findings from the Market Study

The optimal Hybrid IT environment will differ by individual enterprise. Case in point; executives say they need to decide which IT and business functions can be delivered through cloud computing with a projectable, positive business outcome.

In two years, most organizations plan to use software-as-a-service (SaaS) with a variety of applications. However, many believe that their adoption of cloud could be restrained by three major deployment challenges -- security and compliance requirements; cost structure considerations; and risk of operational disruption.

Despite these challenges, successful companies are delivering business value through hybrid cloud in three areas -- operations, finance and innovation. Seventy-six percent of surveyed executives said their most successful cloud initiative has significantly achieved expansion into new industries. Close behind were the creation of new revenue sources and new business models.

That being said, fifty-seven percent of executives from high performing organizations identified cost as the most important criterion in deciding which workloads should be moved to the cloud.

One way to achieve an optimal hybrid solution is to tap into the capabilities and data that resides on existing systems. The study also found that innovation advantages can be gained by utilizing application programming interfaces (APIs) and by enabling access to external technical talent.

In summary, taking advantage of hybrid cloud services is much easier and more effective when companies rely on skilled and experienced technology partners that provide expertise on recent trends, best practice methodologies and proven hybrid architecture frameworks.

Hybrid Cloud Information and Guidance

You have a choice; you can select the vendor that has all the Hybrid IT components -- technology, products and professional services -- that you will ultimately need to succeed. Choose to deploy an optimal hybrid cloud configuration and gain a strategic competitive advantage that will give you a decisive edge in your industry.

Learn how to gain a flexible and secure IT service delivery platform with an optimal hybrid cloud solution that’s designed, engineered and deployed as the best-fit for your particular digital business transformation requirements and technical specifications.

Monday, August 15, 2016

The world of business is changing. Disruptive shifts in power are forcing everyone to question the established status quo. In particular, savvy chief executives are tasking IT organizations to help create compelling customer experiences, support new business models and adopt agile operational processes.

That's why the vast majority of IT and business leaders are joining forces on the organizations’ most pressing commercial needs and wants. They seek an open and flexible business technology foundation that's an enabler, rather than an inhibitor, to meaningful and substantive workflow progress.

Forward-thinking executives believe cloud services can empower them to achieve their strategic business outcomes. Moreover, they want their whole leadership team to collaborate across the business, developing a comprehensive IT strategy that utilizes existing infrastructure investments and the elasticity of cloud services.

Innovation: Opportunities vs Challenges

Meanwhile, CIOs are still compelled to manage the legacy IT infrastructure, while supporting new demands for flexible systems that enable digital innovation. Leading organizations are already blending traditional IT and cloud infrastructures to achieve better business outcomes.

They're planning to adopt more new technology, such as cloud-enabled video services, enterprise mobility apps, social business, IoT and big data analytics. They're very busy efficiently supporting current business objectives with existing infrastructure, and yet they must ensure that IT drives strategic value for the company.

What's more, they're using Hybrid Cloud to springboard to next generation activities that allow them to capture new markets. But there are many others that are still assessing their immediate needs, while considering all the options. Embracing cloud is a work-in-progress. The journey begins with an understanding of the basics.

Cloud Services: Enabler of Disruption

Cloud is now viewed as an impetus for innovation and collaboration. CEOs identify business technology as the number-one factor they see impacting the success of their organization. For these forward-thinking leaders, technology isn't just part of the infrastructure needed to implement a business strategy. It's what makes entirely new disruptive strategies possible.

And without that technology in place to spark continual innovation, CEOs fear being left behind. As a result, CIOs foresee a huge shift in their own roles and responsibilities, as they evolve from an IT service provider to a business innovation enabler.

Often, the private versus public cloud question is not viewed as an either/or decision. Informed organizations are frequently opting to utilize both platforms – what's typically called an Open Hybrid Cloud services environment.

We define hybrid cloud as the secure consumption and integration of services from two or more sources, including private cloud, public cloud and/or traditional IT infrastructure.

A hybrid cloud allows access to data, applications and services where they are most optimally placed -- whether on a public cloud, private cloud or on-premise within an existing IT infrastructure, such as the traditional enterprise data center.

A hybrid cloud approach typically encompasses a wide range of choices including service providers, delivery configurations and billing models. It's designed with the flexibility to change and integrate environments, data storage and services as needed.

Once implemented, a hybrid cloud offers many benefits, including the ability to compose, orchestrate and manage diverse IT workloads, thereby exploiting the portability of stored data assets and associated software applications.

Hybrid Storage: Data in Motion and at Rest

The growing adoption of cloud computing is having a corresponding impact on IT storage evolution. Today's digital business imperatives rely upon easy access to data insights. Next generation enterprise storage solutions support the need to capture, manage and perform real-time analysis on exponentially expanding pools of unstructured data.

That being said, most current enterprise IT environments already include some combination of on-premise block, file and object storage technologies. Over time, utilization of the diverse mix of storage platforms can become sub-optimal.

Data is grouped into three common categories: frequently accessed data (hot data), infrequently accessed data (warm data), and rarely accessed data (cold data) that's stored on slow, less-expensive storage. As hot data cools down and is accessed less frequently, it can be dynamically moved to the optimal storage platform(s).

An adaptive, modular hybrid cloud storage model can increase your flexibility and enable you to choose from all the best-fit solutions. So, how do you deploy a storage model that supports the fluid movement of data? Russ Kennedy describes an evolved approach to proactively securing and moving data to the most appropriate platform, in his insightful editorial entitled "Hybrid cloud storage: Past, present and future."

Monday, July 4, 2016

Forging a viable business technology strategy for today’s global networked economy is a high priority for most forward-thinking CEOs across the globe. Their guidance to CIOs is to create the fusion between existing IT infrastructure and modern cloud services. Moreover, the shift to a Hybrid IT model must support the organization’s key commercial expansion objectives.

The savvy leaders who have a superior approach can extract greater value from their legacy IT investments, and launch new initiatives based upon public and private cloud computing services. This is the new normal -- CIOs must create the optimal blended environment for purposeful technology-enabled innovation.

Primary Motivation

A global study of 500 hybrid cloud decision makers revealed that organizations are increasingly integrating cloud computing and storage resources with traditional IT infrastructure to accommodate dynamic needs and specific business priorities, according to a market study by the IBM Center for Applied Insights.

This thought-provoking study found that improving productivity is currently the number one goal of cloud service adoption, as the most progressive senior executives plan to offload some of their IT resources and management complexity to the cloud.

A close second goal of digital transformation is improved security and risk reduction -- using the flexibility of a hybrid solution to choose which workloads and data to move to the cloud and which to maintain on-premise.

The other two most mentioned goals by survey respondents are IT infrastructure cost reduction -- i.e. shifting costs from fixed IT to as-needed cloud services -- and scalability to handle dynamic IT workloads.

Why Maturity Matters

Following their detailed analysis, the IBM report authors grouped the survey respondents into three categories, based upon the maturity of their hybrid management capabilities and whether they’re reporting a strategic edge that’s realized from their hybrid cloud deployments:

Frontrunners: are gaining a competitive advantage through hybrid cloud and are managing their environment in an integrated, comprehensive fashion for high visibility and control (as an example, through a single data-driven dashboard).

Challengers: are on the journey toward competitive advantage, but haven’t fully achieved unified management of their hybrid cloud environment.

Chasers: are not yet using hybrid cloud to drive competitive advantage and are in the early stages of gaining integrated control over their hybrid environment.

Benefits of Hybrid Leadership

What’s the big improvement of being a visionary frontrunner in your industry? They’re achieving noteworthy business outcomes with a hybrid cloud -- such as productivity gains, including cutting operational costs and maximizing the value of existing IT infrastructure -- at a higher rate than other organizations.

Frontrunners are also more effectively using hybrid cloud to drive digital business innovation, including the creation of new products and services and the expansion into new markets. They also apply hybrid cloud solutions to experiment with cognitive computing and the Internet of Things (IoT) -- which have the potential to enable the development of new business models.

Moreover, the frontrunners are using hybrid solutions as a driver of business process change, with 85 percent reporting that hybrid cloud service adoption is accelerating a progressive digital transformation agenda at their companies.

Hybrid Challenges and Opportunities

Most frontrunners say they have achieved measurable progress from their hybrid cloud efforts. However, more than one in four have experienced difficulty executing their plan to integrate legacy IT infrastructure and cloud computing environments.

Finding and retaining the technical staff with the desired experience is often a challenge, with one in three survey respondents citing an internal skills gap as a big unresolved issue. Furthermore, while companies adopt cloud services to improve security, it remains their number one concern.

In fact, frontrunners cite management complexity and security as a major obstruction to progress. Over three-quarters report that hybrid introduces greater IT management complexity into their environment, and 70 percent say that their hybrid environment causes them greater security concerns.

How are these early-adopters leveraging hybrid environments to achieve a meaningful and substantive competitive advantage? Study findings indicate that they apply a very intentional and holistic approach to implementing and managing their hybrid solutions.

Culture is a Key to Ongoing Hybrid Success

The established frontrunners also understand that the complexity of hybrid environments is best tackled through a collaborative approach to IT investment decision making -- bringing both the managers of IT organizations and Line of Business (LoB) leaders together on a common cause.

The IBM study findings also uncovered that in almost three-quarters of frontrunner organizations, hybrid cloud has elevated the extent to which the CIO is now acting as a trusted adviser to the overall business leadership team.

The collective C-suite and senior IT roles collaborate on key technology decisions that impact business goals. This newfound collaboration sheds light on the benefits of Shadow IT, where the progressive LoB leadership is already using forward-looking cloud services to advance their growth agenda.

Besides, 81 percent of the frontrunners report that hybrid cloud is helping to reduce Shadow IT growth within their organizations. Proving, once again, that savvy CIOs are the ones that are proactively embracing the shift to Hybrid IT models, and thereby regaining workload deployment momentum that was lost due to prior computing and storage resource provisioning constraints.

Monday, May 9, 2016

While the decisive CEOs have a digital transformation agenda, those companies executing plans to re-imagine their business models are in the minority. And yet, the early-adopters now using cloud computing are enabled to respond quickly to changing market conditions. In contrast, the laggards are undecided and risk falling further behind.

This is a global phenomena, where the industry and local market leaders are able to enact their transition with limited interference or threats from more traditional competitors. Just consider the current status-quo within the United Kingdom, as an example.

The transformation of UK businesses is still relatively immature. Many organizations are aware of the potential of open hybrid cloud adoption, but they fail to actively address the technical debt that defines their legacy IT environment. Besides, they tend to narrowly focus on a small snapshot of the bigger picture.

Clear Motivation to Overcome Inertia

While some British leaders have progressive transformational goals under consideration, much work is needed -- if they’re to reach their full digital potential. This is the key finding from the latest market study by the UK-based Cloud Industry Forum (CIF).

Their study was conducted in the fourth quarter of 2015. They polled 250 senior IT and business decision-makers from both the public and private sectors. What they uncovered was not encouraging: just 16 percent of organizations have a digital transformation strategy in place.

However in two years, 72 percent of those polled say they will be better prepared. What are they waiting for, before they act? Perhaps they need a little guidance to show them the way forward.

Maybe they seek someone who can describe how to distinguish between the herd of unimaginative me-too cloud service providers, and thereby offer an alternative point of view -- one that can demonstrate they've navigated boldly across a complex and disruptive digital business transformation landscape.

Seeking a Digital Polymath with Foresight

"Cloud computing is the agent of digital disruption, and we can see that there are significant benefits to be had by businesses that pursue both digital transformation and cloud computing strategies in tandem," stated Alex Hilton, CEO of CIF.

Mr. Hilton believes that cloud computing and digital transformation go hand in hand. In fact, 85 percent of UK businesses with a digital transformation plan have already benefited from a tangible competitive advantage.

Cloud services form the foundation of digital transformation and can facilitate rapid business change. That is apparent, it’s also clear from their research that transformation strategies serve to enhance the effectiveness and benefits of cloud computing implementations.

That's why the more progressive organizations have focused on developing multifaceted talent -- beyond basic technical-centricity. The notion of engaging a Digital Polymath is compelling. Harnessing the wisdom of a worldly open-minded individual that acknowledges the near-term challenges and opportunities, yet also has the vision to be able to anticipate the broader future.

Other key findings from the study include:

13 percent of organizations that have implemented, or planning on implementing a digital transformation strategy, say that cloud is critical to it, and a further 80 percent say that cloud is important.

Implementing a digital transformation strategy benefits cloud users, and those that have are statistically more likely to report experiencing greater benefits from their cloud deployments.

38 percent of cloud users with a digital transformation strategy say that cloud has given their organizations a significant competitive advantage. This figure is higher than the number that do not have a digital transformation strategy reporting the same (5 percent).

The cost savings of cloud users also increases if the organization has implemented a digital transformation strategy (26 percent average saving) compared to those who have not (9 percent average saving).

The CIO is the most likely to be the driving force behind digital transformation, and by some margin at 60 percent. The next most likely is the CEO in 18 percent of cases.

59 percent of organizations that currently have, or are in the process of implementing, a digital transformation strategy say it will steer the use of technology over the next decade.

43 percent of survey respondents report that the intention is to achieve better use of data and analytics, and 30 percent report it is to improve innovation abilities.

The UK market study results are somewhat consistent with the findings of similar surveys of business leaders in the North America region. Striving to merely reach parity with the more progressive market leaders in your industry is likely a blueprint for a myopic plan of action. When you eventually arrive at that destination, you discover that the goal posts have already moved.